Walking Hulme and Moss Side over half a century ago ......

Now I have been a great fan of Roger Shelley’s photographs for over a decade, ever since he shared a collection of pictures he took of a group of young lads playing in the near ruin of Hough End Hall nearly 60 years ago.

The attention to detail and his ability to capture the moment are skills I wish I had.

And so, I was very pleased when he posted another group of images he took during the house clearances in Hulme and Moss Side.

The pictures are a mix of street scenes, and the people he encountered, including kids at play, men and women at work and the ever present piles of rubble as the grand plan advanced and centuries old houses disappeared under the impact of the wrecking ball.

Like the work of Shirley Baker* his pictures don’t dwell on sentimentality and don’t make judgments of the wholesale clearances of communities.

They just record what he saw.

I don't have exact locations for the images, but some can be traced through the odd street name or feature.

And with his permission I will be working my way through the portfolio, fastening on images which tell their own stories.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side in the 1960s and 70s

Pictures;  from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/

*Baker, Shirley, Without a Trace, Manchester and Salford in the 1960s, 2018

An Eltham life that ended in a modest way..........the story of Ruth Pike, nee Patterson, 1782-1857

Mrs Pike grave, 1976

This is the grave of Ruth Pike in our parish churchyard.

It is located on the east side hard up against Well Hall Road and as graves go does not appear that remarkable.

Nor would we expect it to be so for this was one of the common plots and so resting here with Ruth were those with no family connections all of which suggests a life that ended in a modest way.

She was buried by the wall just one hundred and sixty-three years ago  and I doubt that there will be any one who now visit or tend the plot, and with the passage of time her story and her place in Eltham’s history has pretty much been forgotten.

But not quite because fellow historian Jean Gammons has brought Ruth Pike back out of the shadows and it is one of those stories well worth telling.

Her maiden name was Patterson and she married James Pike in 1809.  He was a widower and was also the postmaster for Eltham when the postal service was just beginning to take on its modern shape.

Eltham in the 1830s

His is a story Jean has already told* and so I rather think I shall stick with Mrs Pike, nee Paterson.

“Ruth was James Pike’s second wife and hers was a hard life.  

Her husband died in 1837  and towards the end of his life she practically ran Eltham post office, assisted only her friend Ann Lawrence who was the widow of an Eltham baker.

Her son had been apprenticed to the Pike’s who also ran a clock making business and when James Pike died he took over the firm along with the post office.

And sometime after this Ruth became a school teacher at the local school.”

Little enough I grant you for a life that was lived out over 75 years and its lack of detail stands yet again as testimony to how the lives of the modest and humble have gone unrecorded.

And even this would not have seen the light of day but for Jean’s work.

But history moves on and with each year new lines of enquiry open up as fresh documents are made available and so it is with Ruth.

A tax record for a Ruth patterson, 1805

Only today I found a series of tax records naming a Ruth Patterson of Eltham as paying tax for the years 1804 and 1805, which follow on from a series of other records for a Richard Patterson in the 1790s and yet more for another Richard Patterson in the mid 19th century.

Now I don’t know how common a name Patterson was in Eltham during the last decades of the 18th and into the next.  That will be a laborious task matching census returns, directories and parish records but is doable.

In the meantime it raises some intriguing questions about Ruth.  The sums she pays are not much but it is the fact that she is paying them which is important and marks out one more little detail.  She rented from a Nicholas Guilliard who also appears in the tax records from the 1790s through into the next century appears on the electoral roll in 1802 and is buried in the parish church seven years later.

The burial record of Mrs Pike, 1857

But as yet it is impossible to track where he held his Eltham land which in turn would tell us a bit more about Ruth. Still I know that he paid duties on the money he obtained for an indenture for the young apprentice Henry Roffey who he took on in 1787 and I am confident that more will emerge.

As will the details of Ruth’s life and that I think is a good point to close.

Pictures, the grave of Mrs Pike, 1978, the Eltham the Pikes would have known circa 1830, courtesy of Jean Gammons, Mrs Pike’s  death entry from St John’s parish records, courtesy of ancestry.co.uk, and the City of London Corporation Libraries, Archives and Guildhall Art Gallery Department, and the tax record of Ruth Patterson, courtesy of ancestry. co. uk, and London Land Tax Records. London, England: London Metropolitan Archives.

Original research By Jean Gammons

*It appeared in a series of short articles in the Eltham Society’s Journal.

Knocking down bits of Wilbraham Road .... in the summer of 1963

Now the next time you are in the Co-op on Wilbraham Road, spare a thought for the buildings that once stood on this spot.

They consisted of two tall residential properties, which like their neighbours stretching up towards Whitelow Road had been converted into shops with living accommodation above.

Our two were replaced by the building rising from the ground in 1963.

And for a long time I had just taken for granted that the whole modern block of shops had been built at the same time.

But not so, as the picture indicates, and taking a walk down Wilbraham Road from Brundrettes Road, it is possible to see the change in design and date.

So you learn something new, all the time.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Wilbraham Road, 1963, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection,  https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY

The 42 from the Refuge Building …..a furniture shop, Wimpy Bar, and a shed load more …..1967

Now, with the passage of a full half century, it is the detail you forget.

I stood at the bus stops outside the old Refuge Building for years, and never gave much thought to the building opposite.

Back then it was just a furniture shop, and as I was a first year student on a grant, living in a series of drab and worn out  bed sits I gave Shaw’s Furniture shop scant attention.

And likewise I don’t think I ever went in the cinema round the corner, or took a train from Oxford Road Railway Station, and gave no attention to the features of the Refuge Building behind me.

It would be years before I went in to the former furniture shop, and only after it had become the Cornerhouse which was an art gallery, cinema, bookshop, bar and café, with superb views up Oxford Street, and some pretty interesting films which you would never see at the Odeon.

Likewise my discovery of the railway station with its wonderful 60s entrance would be delayed for a few years, and instead I fastened on the Oxford Road Corridor from town to Withington.

Which also meant that the hospital opposite Shaw’s, along with the kiosk which announced “You Are Safe With The Oxford Rubber Goods” was just a blur from the window of the 42.

Nor do I think I ever went in the Wimpy, which has over the decades changed its name and the food on offer.

And now, Shaw’s is No. 70, the Refuge Building is a hotel, and the kiosk became Euronews, although last time I passed it all seemed closed up.

But I still use Oxford Road Station and marvel at that entrance.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Shaw’s, and the Wimpy, 1967, "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection", https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY,  and Oxford Road Railway Station, 2009 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Another 20 objects in the story of Chorlton ........ nu 1 the ration announcement

I am looking at a card sent to the Chorlton branch of the Manchester and Salford Co-op shop on Beech Road in the summer of 1953.

Over the years I have seen everything from a declaration of war to letters from the good and the great along with plenty of other official stuff which once carried great significance.

But in its way this little piece of paper is up there with the rest and would certainly have been greeted by the people of Chorlton as a very important moment, for this marked almost the end of 14 years of rationing which had begun in 1940.

“Limits had been imposed on the sale of bacon, butter and sugar.

Then on 11 March 1940 all meat was rationed. Clothes coupons were introduced and a black market soon developed while queueing outside shops and bartering for extra food became a way of life.

There were allowances made for pregnant women who used special green ration books to get extra food rations, and breastfeeding mothers had extra milk.

Restrictions were gradually lifted three years after war had ended, starting with flour on 25 July 1948, followed by clothes on 15 March 1949.

On 19 May 1950 rationing ended for canned and dried fruit, chocolate biscuits, treacle, syrup, jellies and mincemeat.

Petrol rationing, imposed in 1939, ended in May 1950 followed by soap in September 1950.

Three years later sales of sugar were off ration and last May butter rationing ended."*

So this marked one of those moments to be savoured and perhaps marked the real end to the war and the return to “normalcy.”

Now rationing couldn’t have been easy but it was a real attempt to prevent the dramatic rise in food prices which had marked the first three years of the Great War.

Back then the continued rise in the cost of living had not only meant great hardship for the majority of the country but contributed to a real sense that some were profiteering from the shortages at the expense of the rest.

And so I am pleased that Bob Jones shared this little bit of history with me.

Pictures; courtesy of Bob Jones

*1954: Housewives celebrate end of rationing, http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_3818000/3818563.stm

At the vicar's jubilee in Eltham with Peter Wakeman in the field by the vicarage in the September of 1833

“in many of the homes of Eltham ..... so impressive were the demonstrations that took place [to commemorate his fifty years in office in 1833] that the children and grandchildren of those who witnessed them find to this day, a congenial theme for conversational purposes.”*

I still find it quite amazing that an event that took place in the September of 1833 could still be remembered so vividly over seventy years after it happened.

Of course it may well be that this has been exaggerated in the retelling, but I have no doubt that R.R.C Gregory who commented on the impact of the celebrations to mark the jubilee of the Reverend John Kenward Shaw Brooke’s tenure as vicar were accurate.

Mr Gregory was an excellent historian whose meticulous account of the history of Eltham is well researched and not apt to linger on the might have been.

John Kenward Shaw Brooke was vicar of St John’s in Eltham from the age of 24 in 1783 till his death in 1840.

Now that was indeed some record and that combined with his reputation resulted in John Fry’s newly built row of cottages taking on the name of Jubilee Cottages, a name they retained till their demolition in 1957.

And so to the celebrations which was held on the field by the vicarage behind the High Street.  Much of what we know of the event comes from a hand bill and a ticket of invitation which had sat behind a framed engraving of the vicar for seventy-five years.

One side was printed “1833. Eltham Jubilee, in commemoration of the 50th year the Rev. J.K. Shaw Brooke has resided within the parish as Vicar, universally beloved and respected” and invited “Peter Wakemean ... to partake on Thursday , the 5th day of September, of a dinner provided by public subscription in token of the respect and regard entertained the Vicar of the Parish Of Eltham, 1833
N.B. You are quested to wear this card with the other side in front, in a conspicuous manner, to attend on the day in the Court Yard and to bring with you a knife and fork.”

And that was what Peter Wakeman did for according to Mr Gregory “around the card are the needle marks to shew that it had been carefully sewn upon some conspicuous part of his attire.”

Along with the meal there was to be a host of activities including Gingling Matches, Scrambling for Penny Pieces, Eating Rolls and Treacle, with Dipping for Marbles, Dipping for Oranges, Climbing the Pole and Jumping in Sacks as well as  Hurdle Stakes and Flogging the Ball out of the Hole.

All of which was pretty straight forward apart from Gingling Matches which I discovered was  “an old English game in which blindfolded players try to catch one player not blindfolded who keeps jingling a bell”

And then as now the day was finished off with “A grand display of Fireworks.”

I suppose it might seem very tame but this was rural England at play, and these were the ways we would have entertained ourselves in the early 19th century.

Nor is this all, for the observant of you will have picked up on the fact that Peter had to provide his own knife and fork and that the meal had been provided by a subscription.

But in other ways our event looks forward for each guest had to bring proof of identity and wear it as both a way in to the event and as a means of securing their continued presence.

Our card may not be a smart device but it was nevertheless the way you proved who you were on the that September day.

I rather think I will now go off and search for Mr Wakeman for here I feel is yet another story.

Pictures;  from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

*The Story of Royal Eltham, R.R.RC. Gregory 1909

In the Lloyd’s ……. with John and Enriqueta Rylands

 I am not the only one who has looked forward to the second novel about the lives of Mr. and Mrs Rylands.

It is the second in a trilogy which explores their lives by local author Juliette Tomlinson.

The first novel came out in 2024 and last month she published Sunnyside which takes the story forward.

And last night an invited audience celebrated the launch of book number two.

The speeches were brief, the live music from a ukulele band was excellent and Juliette was on hand to talk through how she came to write the book and sign copies.

Of which there was a good supply of Sunnyside from Chorlton Bookshop who did the business of selling copies to eager readers.

So, a good night all round and for those who missed the event Juliette will be speaking during the Chorlton Arts Festival on May 23rd about her first two novels. **

Location; The Lloyds

Pictures, a special night from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 2026

*Longford, A Manchester love story, 2024, and Sunnyside The Story Continues, 2026 Juliette Tomlinson, The Squeeze Press, are available from Chorlton Bookshop or from The Squeeze Press, www.woodenbooks.com

**Juliette Tomlinson, talking about Longford and Sunnyside at the Beagle , 456-458 Barlow Moor Road, May 23rd, 19-21.30